I have a mining rig with 4 Sapphire 5830's running BAMT - air cooled. Been running it for a few months at 65*C average. Yesterday one of the card's fans died and the temperature on that card jumped to mid 90*C.

I've found few threads talking about similar cases here, but none offered "ultimate" solution.It seems finding the replacement fan is not easy... and not very practical either.Following suggestions in other threads I've placed a 90mm high speed fan on top of died oneand stuck 60mm fan on the front and another 90mm on the back of that card.The temperature is hovering around ~80*C on that card now...

According to BAMT it's right on border of "being dangerous"... what do you think?Should I:- keep like this? - try to repair it? (cost effective?)- turn it off and run without (eliminates the possibility of fire)?

Thanks

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Believe it or not, that's actually not the worst this card been through...That same night, the accounting girl "felt hot" in the evening and turn off the a/c... and left it off for the night!In the morning the office was at 98*F and the cards were at running at 100*C+ !!!

Right now, they are all still running at 300Mhs each with 2% dead... I guess, it's ok...

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... I do not exactly have a case... ... it's kind of thrown together type of of deal...... before Bitcoin it was a wire-shelf... like this:

But, yeah, you are 100% right, I will be careful not to burn down the office.Still need a real job after all...

Seriously, buy cases or design one. Number one, cases allow for controlled airflow and controlled thermal manipulation. Number two they allow realistic cooling systems that might be a bit more expensive but will actually extend the life of your components. Number 3, cases (custom or OtR) allow you to ensure that hardware failure doesn't damage other components.

Take some time on ACAD or just drawing it out, and design what you need. You'll thank yourself for it.

If nothing else, keep an eye on the military/government surplus sites and see if you can grab some old DARPA or USAF cases. I've got an old USAF case that I used for my server that I picked up for $5 at an auction that had refrigeration, room for multiple motherboards, and all kinds of good stuff.

Yes, for sure properly designed case with calculated airflow does extend components live. Our main company has their own NOC. There we maintain proper everything...

But this thing was more of an experiment in Bitcoin mining.I'm still not sure of the outcome of this experiment.The rig cost about $600 to put together - using the most cost-effective components. ($/Mhs)This is all just to see, if indeed it would be profitable.It's sitting in one of our small offices, which is more like an apartment. (free electricity )It'll break even in 1 month. If I do decide to do some serious mining after that, yes I will for sure use your advice on DARPA, USAF cases and government auctions...

But again, who knows, maybe by then everything will change (ref: ASIC)

Selling gold & silver for Bitcoins.Please send me PM, if you have any questions.

If I do decide to do some serious mining after that, yes I will for sure use your advice on DARPA, USAF cases and government auctions...

Hell, don't forget to do that. A local computer dealer went to an auction, bought a bunch of workstations he figured were junk, and when he cracked them open they had state of the art video cards (at the time), good CPU's, heavy duty power supplies, and loads of RAM. The hard-drives were crap (15GB) and the cases looked like something from 1985, but still, that's a lot of good hardware. God only knows what they were used for when the USAF owned them, but he managed to part out all that stuff for quite a bit of cash compared to his $50 investment.